Marxism, the State and British Politics

Abstract

This article indicates how Marxist principles can be used to study political science and, in particular, be applied to an analysis of governing problems and responses in the British context. It proceeds by suggesting that if political science is to rise above the level of investigative journalism, then it is necessary to grapple with some difficult issues surrounding theories of the state. Following a brief review of Weberian approaches to the state, the article concentrates on ‘open Marxist’ discussions of the state. The central contention of the article is that deriving the state from Marx's account of the circuit of capital allows a conceptualisation of governing, and the limits of state action, which is absent in most orthodox political science.